Self-propelled cotton harvesting machines typically come in two forms, namely cotton stripper vehicles and cotton picker vehicles. Cotton strippers are designed to remove the cotton bolls entirely, or possibly sever the stalk near the surface of the ground and take the entire stalk together with cotton bolls, into the machine. A cotton picker, on the other hand, “picks” the cotton from the bolls, typically by using revolving spindle fingers or prongs. Cotton pickers leave the cotton plant, and unopened bolls, intact, such that a given field is often harvested more than once during a growing season, the pickers making repeated trips through the cotton field as the bolls ripen.
Pressure plates and “scrapping” plates may be added to the picker units to increase the cotton picking efficiency. Scrapping plates, as the name implies, are often added during subsequent runs through a field in order to better allow the cotton picker to pick the remaining cotton or “scraps” from the plant. Some conventional cotton pickers use one or more spring-loaded pressure plates to compress the cotton plant into the revolving picking spindles. Scrapping plates may be added to the pressure plates to create narrow channels surrounding the spindles, thereby increasing the likelihood that the cotton bolls will be exposed to the spindles as the machine travels through the field.
While scrapping plates can increase picking yield, they also can lower the quality of the yield by introducing additional bark, leaves, and other detritus into the accumulator. Therefore, the scrapping plates are typically removed for primary harvesting or otherwise when harvesting conditions are such that the scrapping plates are not needed. One problem with this, however, is that because scrapping plates are typically bolted onto the pressure plates inside the picker header, they can be cumbersome to mount and dismount. Consequently, operators may tend to forgo their use when needed or keep them in place despite being no longer beneficial, or even detrimental.